Transistor devices are widely used as electronic switches in a variety of different applications, such as industrial, automotive, or consumer applications. Those applications may include power conversion, motor drive, induction heating or lighting applications, to name a few. In many of these applications, a driver switches on and off the transistor device based on a PWM (pulse-width modulated) signal. A frequency of this PWM signal can be dependent on the type of application and/or an operation state of the respective application. For example, in heating applications where a transistor device can be used to drive a heating resistor, a frequency of the PWM signal can be in the tens of Hz; in lighting applications where a transistor device can be used to drive a lamp, such as a light emitting diode (LED), a frequency of the PWM signal can be several hundred Hz; in automotive applications where a transistor device can be used to drive a magnetic valve a frequency of the PWM signal can be several kilohertz (kHz); in motor drive applications where a transistor device can be used to drive a brushed DC motor a frequency of the PWM signal can be several tens of kHz; and in power conversion applications where a transistor device can be used to drive an inductive load (choke) a frequency of the PWM signal can be several tens of kHz up to several hundred kHz.
Transistor devices may be implemented with different technologies. Since each transistor technology generally provides different tradeoff between different performance metrics, size, and cost, the selection of the transistor type may be important. For example, insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) are generally optimized for high efficiency and switching. IGBTs are also generally capable to operate at very high voltages, with breakdown voltages that reach 1 kV, 1.2 kV or higher.
A technology such as IGBT may be suitable for applications such as induction heating (IH) cookers. IH cookers are very popular, in part, because of their high energy efficiency. To achieve high efficiency, IH cookers may use resonant converter topologies due to the soft switching losses and lower EMI spectrum.